Creating a Truly Intelligent Workplace with AI & Machine Learning

The evolving nature of the Intelligent Workplace has seen some exciting developments and the pace at which these advances are occurring is set to continuously accelerate. The online version of the workplace is gradually becoming more important than the bricks and mortar of a traditional organization. This is partly because many organizations are realizing the value and importance of their intranet in harnessing and supporting the changing nature of the workplace.

These developments could bring some challenges to organizations, particularly in determining how they foster employee engagement, collaboration and productivity. Organizations must focus on managing how these changes are executed, as effective change management is paramount to the success of a truly intelligent workplace. Organizations need to define a Change Management role for IT projects; someone removed from the technology to facilitate the cultural change around new solutions. Intranets are designed to engage and service entire organizations, therefore numerous departments must be involved to ensure a cohesive plan is incorporated for a holistically intelligent workplace.

Is Artificial Intelligence the Catalyst for a Truly Intelligent Workplace?

Alan Turing’s paper entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” published in 1950 opened the doors for the reality of Artificial Intelligence in the modern world; with John McCarthy subsequently coining the term “Artificial Intelligence,” at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence back in 1956. Despite its long history, there’s been a rise and fall in AI’s popularity over the decades and it’s safe to say it has returned once again to the forefront of evolving technologies.

Artificial Intelligence has huge potential in the Digital Workplace but is yet to be fully realized. An element of human intervention is essential for incorporating AI in the Intelligent Workplace. This is because AI not only lacks emotional intelligence, but also the full gambit of how humans process information and intrinsically make decisions.

One area of the Intelligent Workplace where Artificial Intelligence certainly helps, is its ability to rapidly analyze massive amounts of unstructured data from various sources. In this way, AI processes big data to derive meaningful analysis in a much faster and effective way than could be achieved by a human. As a result, AI can analyze user behavior to determine which aspects of the intranet may or may not be functioning optimally, and then work to improve these as necessary. Look forward to Bonzai exploring AI within the Bonzai Intranet platform with our upcoming ShapeShifter release.

What’s the Syllabus for Machine Learning?

Machine learning is a subset of AI, whereby a programmer gives a system a goal and subsequently provides it with feedback, which consists of a reward for favorable behavior and an error for incorrect behavior. Through the reinforcement of positive or negative feedback, the machine has the capability to learn the optimal approach to achieve a desired goal. As more data becomes available, the machine continues to update and improve on its performance.

In an Intelligent Workplace, capitalizing on machine learning starts with the intranet. The intranet platform can progress and be taught over time, continually improving and learning what activities the user is trying to achieve or what information they are seeking based on their behavior patterns and search terms.

The machine recognizes what the user needs sometimes before the user has realized what information they require next, based on usage patterns and analyzing data to assess and predict trends. In this way, machine learning can suggest the next step to the user based on previous action(s).

Is the Search for Great Search over?

Search is a critically important factor for the Intelligent Workplace, as the value of technological developments can be realized in how information is discovered and displayed to end-users. Abbreviations and familiar terms can be identified in applications to ensure that the correct information is presented, even if the searched term is slightly different. This type of search may be powered with machine learning enabling chatbots and systems to ‘learn’ colloquialisms, acronyms and much more.

Chatbots are infiltrating many areas of the intelligent workplace, as they help users to navigate, update and search the intranet. Chatbots help to efficiently retrieve information that is pertinent, timely and accurate. Oftentimes, chatbots help users to rapidly find information by utilizing a Q&A interface to identify, organize and accurately display what the user is looking for. Chatbots are also used to conveniently aid system administrators in updating the design and content of their intranet, by serving as an interactive command-based interface.

Analytics has great potential for facilitating intelligent search by analyzing trends in data processing and interpretation, so that relevant content can be pushed out to employees. However, quality content management and information architecture are crucial factors in optimizing search capacity of the intranet. Advances in the capabilities of intranet search, have resulted information being available and presented to users based on their role and behavioral patterns.

Many organizations are investing in ‘Digital Transformation’ to future-proof their organization and keep up with the demand for internal technology investments. Oftentimes, these technological initiatives provide efficiencies to employees, freeing up their time so that they can focus more on valuable human interactions and allow technology to perform tedious tasks. The nature of employment has changed with employees becoming more selective of the types of organizations at which they work. Employees have organizational standards, many of which include technological investments, so is it a matter of keep up or they’ll keep out?

The Intelligent Workplace – Today, Tomorrow and Beyond

We look forward to sharing more with you in upcoming blogs and webinars on how we are developing the Bonzai intranet platform to leverage more Intelligent Workplace technologies…stay tuned.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and experience on how the Intelligence Workplace has changed and what’s to come. Please feel free to comment below or email us at: stressfree@bonzai-intranet.com.